Ex-Activision Blizzard boss Bobby Kotick has described the legal action taken by multiple government agencies over alleged harrassment at his former company as “fake lawsuits”, which he says were deliberately planned by a union in a bid to increase its membership.
Kotick made the claim during a wide-ranging interview on the Grit podcast, in which he also said a petition signed by around 1300 Activision Blizzard employees calling for his removal as CEO was also “fake” – without providing more detail on which part of the document was apparently false.
Activision Blizzard was rocked back in 2001 by claims that the company had fostered a “frat boy” culture, with allegations of sexual harassment and gender discrimination. With multiple lawsuits pending, criticism centred on Kotick’s handling of the matter, particularly after a damning Wall St Journal report raised questions about how much the CEO had known about historical allegations.
When asked about the matter, and specifically the petition signed by Activision Blizzard staff asking Kotick to step down, the former CEO responded: “That was fake.”
“I can tell you exactly what happened,” Kotick continued. “The Communication Workers of America [CWA] union started looking at technology. They kept losing because they represented the News Guild, Comcast, and they realised they were losing members at a really dramatic rate, so they gotta figure out: how do they get new union members? So they first targeted a bunch of different businesses – Google, some other tech companies, Tesla and SpaceX, and us.”
“It’s the power of unions,” Kotick went on. “I didn’t really understand this until we went through this process. They were able to get a government agency, the EEOC [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission] and a state employment agency called the Department of Fair Employment and Housing [DFEH], to file fake lawsuits against us and Riot Games making allegations about the workplace that didn’t… weren’t true, but they were able to do this.”
Back in 2021, the DFEH described Activision Blizzard as “a breeding ground for harassment and discrimination against women”. At the time, the company denied the claims, stating that the case included “distorted, and in many cases false, descriptions of Blizzard’s past”.
League of Legends maker Riot Games was subject to its own, separate legal action several years prior, which alleged “gender discrimination in pay and promotion, sexual harassment, and retaliation against women”. In 2022, Riot agreed to a $100m settlement.
“They’re so clever,” Kotick said, still discussing the CWA union. “They realised that would be a thing that they then could come into a company – because we pay well, we have great benefits, great working environment, and they could say, ‘hey, the culture is bad’, ‘people are harassed’ or ‘they’re retaliated against’, or ‘there’s discrimination’.
“They came up with this plan, hired a PR firm, and they started attacking our company. They got these two agencies to file these lawsuits to claim there was some sexual harassment… We didn’t have any of that. Ultimately they had to admit that this was not truthful and withdraw the complaints.”
In 2022, Activision Blizzard said it had reached an agreement with the EEOC to set aside $18m for employees who had experienced harassment and discrimination at the company. A year later, the DFEH lawsuit was also settled, for $54.8m. As part of the case’s settlement, Activision Blizzard noted that no court had proven any claim of widespread abuse.
“As the CRD [California Civil Rights Department] also expressly acknowledged in the agreement, ‘no court or independent investigation has substantiated any allegations that there has been systemic or widespread sexual harassment at Activision Blizzard’,” an Activision statement noted, as the settlement was agreed.
“In addition, the CRD has acknowledged that no court or independent investigation substantiated any allegations that ‘Activision Blizzard’s board of directors, including its chief executive officer, Robert Kotick, acted improperly with regard to the handling of any instances of workplace misconduct.'”
Separately, Activision said in 2023 it would pay $35m to settle workplace misconduct charges raised by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Kotick went on to discuss instances where he had been made aware of “inappropriate conduct”, and his response to these.
“When I heard about things that were inappropriate conduct in the workplace, I just fired people, like on the spot,” Kotick said. “My view is you don’t want to have a culture where there was any kind of discrimination, retaliation, misconduct. It’s bad for recruiting and its bad for retention.
“My general council said yeah, we got these investigations but like we’re not… we don’t have any issues, we’re not worried about this.
“He came to the board and said yeah, we got the EEOC and the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing but you know, we turned over all our documentation, we don’t have any issues here, this is not something to be concerned about.”
Elsewhere in the same interview, Kotick recalled Blizzard development being impacted by the company’s “terrible” attempt at a World of Warcraft film, and his attempts at trying to get a Jurassic Park game made.